This week’s map reflects the impact of the week of bad political news for Romney following the release of controversial videos of the candidate speaking with donors.  The impact is pretty stark:  only two states now qualify by our criteria as “toss-ups,” all the states previously in that category now showing an Obama lead of more than 5 points in recent polling.  Of the two states now in the toss-up column, North Carolina had previously leaned Romney but is now showing slight Obama leads in recent polling.  The other, New Hampshire, has generally leaned in Obama’s direction but in recent polls the numbers have dropped below our threshold for being kept in the Obama column.  So the most likely scenario, if the election were held yesterday, is Obama winning both of those states and winning the election by a sizable majority in the electoral college.  Here is the map:

Other things to note include the solidification of Obama’s leads in Michigan and Wisconsin.  Ohio is now also just on the cusp of moving up to the “likely Obama” category, we will see how trends pan out over the coming weeks.

As always, here are our criteria for the shading of the map (based on most recent polling data):

• Candidate has 20 pt or greater lead in a state:  “Solid”
• Candidate has between 10 and 20 pt lead in a state:  “Likely”
• Candidate has between a 5 and 10 pt lead in a state:  “Leans”
• Candidates are polling within 5 points of one another in a state:  “toss up”